My experiences are that for small stratas (my experiences are of around 7 lots) there are only slight differences between the practical everyday obligations of strata and maintaining a house or a few cars. Yet how many owners undergo formal training to do this?
At a 6 owner strata I was involved in one owner wanted to engage a ‘risk management’ engineer to come out and do a report. His major concern being legal liability. I argued that if owners kept their eyes open and used common sense we were not at any more exposure than a diligent single home owner. Anyway the owner put enough of a scare into the others that we spent $5900 on a report that highlighted not one major current fault but nit picked all sorts of immaterial potential faults (but we got a very impressive glossy brochure).
The same owner convinced the owners corporation that engaging a professional Strata Manager was the only way to ensure strict compliance under the laws. This resulted in our levys increasing by 120% but not thing improving either administratively or in terms of the maintenance of the property.
I am not arguing that certification of owners and engaging professionals should never be done. Keeping of accounts and paperwork etc need doing but it is not that difficult eg we have a bank account that every owner can view but requires two owners authorisations to do a transaction. However there seems to be an attitude for strata that engaging a professional negates the obligation of owners to be honest, transparent and take a bit of responsibility.